


Dark Beauty

by glacis



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-28
Updated: 2010-01-28
Packaged: 2017-10-06 18:34:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/56591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glacis/pseuds/glacis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What does a portrait see that others might miss?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dark Beauty

Dark Beauty, by seeker.  Sir Cadogan - If only he could, he would.  Written for the Severus Snape Fuh-Q Fest (Snape/Sir Cadogan pairing)

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Few real people knew what it was like to be a portrait. To be confined to a world of what can be seen, explicitly, whilst burdened with a portion of the memories and a great majority of the personality of the original of which one is a copy in oil, condemned to watch in solitary splendor (except for the other portraits, of course) as the grand parade of the world went by for generations.

Well, there were the ghosts, of course, but whilst they had more of the personality of the originals, being the shades of same, they had even less substance, and so were even less satisfactory in, shall one say, the physical forms of personal expression.

Sir Cadogan, Caddy to his friends when he saw them, which was much too seldom stuck as he was in the far reaches of the seventh floor, sighed heartily and fed his pony another apple from the inexhaustible supply in his pocket. He'd had a bucolic life (rather boring), no afterlife of which he was aware (terminally boring) and other than one brief spectacular foray into Gryffindor defense against a mass murderer animagus who turned out to be a protective godparent in disguise, which had taxed his courage less than his vocabulary since no one would take him up on his duel challenges, his life as a portrait had been dull (spectacularly boring).

There were few people to talk with, there was little to see, there was nothing to do.

Usually.

Except for those nights when the shadow he called his dark beauty stalked the halls.

The original Caddy had been a hearty fellow, stout of heart and body, short and round and loquacious. His portrait, by necessity, was cut from the same pattern. At least they'd let him keep his stalwart pony, without whose company he'd've gone mad from sheer boredom, and his large sword ... the weapon, not the other large sword he'd been quite proud of and rather talented with in real life, if his satisfied coterie of lovers were any indication. He'd always had a secret regret, however.

He'd always wanted to be slim, dark and silent. Always found the combination powerfully attractive. His original's sword had been triumphant on the fields of love more often with the slim, dark, silent type, of either sex, than with any other, and considering how well he'd loved to love, that was quite a compliment to the strength of his preferences. Which led to the shadow.

Who was slim, and beautifully dark, with obsidian eyes and shining hair the color of a raven's wing (he thought, it being hard to judge by the few flickering torches in the abandoned hall in the middle of the night) and exceptionally silent. The only time Caddy had ever heard a word fall from those pouty, sculptured lips was during his temporary tenure as door guard at Gryffindor, when Esme the Fat had been cruelly shredded.

Those few words, the content of which mattered not in the least, had cemented Caddy's hopeless infatuation with the man. Rich as butter toffee, dark as the most sinful chocolate, heated with anger and utterly thrilling to the ear. Would have been thrilling to other parts, if Caddy'd had 'em.

As it was, he MISSED his sword. What he would have given to be able to leap from the flat plane of his canvas, throw himself upon his beloved, bedew that pale face with kisses, and when the time was exactly right, plow that slender body with the length of his manly sword. He ached, as deeply as if it wasn't a phantom but a real hurt, the loneliness in his heart as harsh as any cruel emotion ever felt by any actual heart.

He sighed.

Ate the pony's next apple, not noticing the glare it earned him.

Wished heartily for Belgian chocolates, since he couldn't have his manly sword.

Sighed again.

Since all the excitement a little while ago (hard to tell how long, really, as portraits didn't notice time the way originals did), with all the scorching and hexing and cursing and new ghosts being made, the halls had dulled down again. No more attacks, no more evil wizards trying to kill everyone, no more false alarms leading to bouts of spontaneous courage. No more dark beauty roaming the halls.

Perhaps when the battle ended, so too did the reason for the man's nocturnal ramblings. While Caddy was generous enough to be glad his beloved was no longer suffering, he was honest enough to admit he really missed seeing his love. He wondered if the man ached, as well. He always seemed so alone, on his long late stalking around the halls, his eyes fixed on everything and nothing at all.

Caddy understood.

Perhaps better than anyone else could.

Well, anyone who wasn't a portrait.

He dug into his pocket, withdrew another apple and a carrot, held the apple out for the pony and munched disconsolately on the carrot. The long rounded hardness in his mouth brought back lovely memories, of other men in other days, and he indulged in a few wistful moments mentally reviewing some of the better swords his original had swallowed. Floating out of his reverie to find himself running his tongue over the carrot in what could only be described as a lascivious manner, the pony looking at him with wide eyes, he stopped licking and started chomping, an unaccustomed glower on his face.

An echo at the end of the hall caught his ear, and he stopped mid-chew, swallowing hastily so as not to choke when he leapt to his feet and hurried to the side of his frame, straining to look. Yes! It was!

His dark beauty was back!

The stalk had mellowed to a prowl, less force but all the grace intact, and Caddy's breath caught in his throat. As his beloved came closer, night-dark eyes sweeping the corridor, raven hair swinging against his pale skin, a strand catching at the corner of his fine thin lips, Caddy noticed that there was the hint of color in the porcelain cheeks. The lines etched round his eyes weren't so deep, and the hard set of his mouth had softened. Even his proud nose seemed less hawkish.

Caddy nearly swooned. His love was so beautiful. He didn't know he'd spoken the words until those piercing eyes fixed on him incredulously, and the man snorted. Magnificently, like a well-bred racehorse. Caddy blushed, feeling his pigment warm.

"You're barmy," the man told him, the rich timbre of his voice completely offsetting the insult.

"Please," Caddy beamed over at him, "Tell me more."

A single inky brow arched, and Caddy shivered with delight.

"Tell you more of what? That you are decidedly thick for a two-dimensional object, that in life you must have driven people mad with your drivel, and that you've obviously spent too long with only your pony for company if you think I'm beautiful?"

The shiver turned into the slightest of trembles, as Caddy's hands went wet and if he'd had anything to swell his trousers, they'd've swelled. "Your voice, your eyes, your lips, your hair --"

That earned him another snort, but the disbelief running rampant over his dark beauty's face did not deter him.

"-- your slim strong body, the steel in your spine, the elegance of your movements, they inspire me!"

An odd expression crossed the well-loved face, as if it were attempting a feat it hadn't attempted in a long time. Eventually an amused smile barely curved the lips. "Are you by any chance drunk? Been fermenting your apples, have you?"

Caddy placed a hand over the center of his chest where his heart would be if he had internal organs, and stared the man right in the eyes he could now see were sherry brown, not ink black, and even more beautiful than he'd thought. Pouring his love into words since he couldn't express it in actions, separated as they were by his encanvassed state, he declared fervently, "I adore you. You are the epitome of all that is desirable to me, and would that I had the opportunity, I would woo you and win you and celebrate you above all others for as long as we both should live!"

His beloved smirked. "A marriage proposal. From a portrait. This day becomes more and more interesting by the moment." The husky words thrilled Caddy, who chose to disregard the sarcasm abundantly lacing them.

Leaning his shoulder against the opposite wall, the man crossed his arms and stared frostily at Caddy. The trembling in Caddy's body intensified, and if he'd been capable, he'd've had goose pimples running all over him. His other hand tossed the apple it held in the pony's general direction, to a gratified if startled neigh as it bounced off the pony's nose, and reached up to clasp its mate at his chest. Visions, illusions of action found previously only in dream, wrapt themselves round the reality of the dark beauty before him, and he said what he could not do.

"If t'were possible, and we two could be as one, I would court you. I would speak to you in softest tones of love and devotion. I would gift you with everything in my power to give, as long as it gave you pleasure, for the simple return of a smile on your lips or a hint of color in your fair cheeks or the lightest touch of your hand on my face. I would kiss you until there was not air in the universe for us to breathe, and touch you -- oh! I would touch you! -- from the silky fall of your lovely hair to the soft fine satin of your skin, the planes of your face, the breadth of your chest, the swell of your manhood, the length of your arms and legs, the strength of your back, the luscious firmness of your buttocks, the secret heat of your body, in my mouth, against my skin, atop and astride and beneath me, until neither of us could move from the excess of our passion expended!"

Caught up in his flight of fancy, he never noticed when, during the course of his passionate extollment, the smirk widened to a true smile, then broke as rusty laughter fell free of the man's lips; nor did he see how the stern face softened, the ice in the dark eyes lightened to something approaching warmth, and the laughter died away leaving the smile behind. All he saw, when the vision of lovemaking faded, was his dark beauty smiling at him with almost-warmth in his eyes.

"You are certifiably insane," his beloved informed him. Straightening from the wall, the man reached out a single fingertip and touched Caddy's face gently. "Harmless, and rather sweet with it, but completely out of your tree. Don't spread this to the other portraits. You'll be the laughingstock of your community, pathetic as it is."

Caddy paid no attention to the words, too lost in the whisper of touch he wished so fiercely could be real, and the thread of amusement under the purring voice. Then the touch, and the voice, and the beloved presence, were all gone, leaving him alone once more in the dark with his pony.

He cried all night. Lay insensate, completely drained and lonelier than ever before, his head nestled against the pony's side as they both slept.

Awoke to find himself in a hall he'd not been in before. Gray flagstones, a huge hearth, draping of green and silver on the wall, odd bottles and cauldrons bubbling away on tables. He peered around, confused, then delighted, as the door of the room opened and his dark beauty walked in, nose buried in a book.

"You came!" Caddy cried.

His love smirked at him. "I work here."

"You do?" Another wide-eyed peek. "Where is here?"

"This is my laboratory. I decided if you were going to babble to all and sundry of your besotted affection for me, I should put you in a place where you could damage neither my reputation nor your own, if you have one. Try not to talk overmuch. I prefer silence when I'm concentrating."

"Oh, I won't! I'd do anything, to be here, near you! Oh, it's wonderful. I'll be silent as a mouse. Quiet as the grave, my love, for the privilege of being near you, of seeing you -- in the light! Your hair IS the blue sheen of a raven's wing! Your beauty in the light of day is more magnificent even than I believed, seen in the shadows of the night!" Before he could descend into rhapsody, his beloved strode over to him.

"If you don't shut your trap, I'll put you back in the attic and drape you with a cloth and you'll never see anyone at all in the light of day. What little sympathy I have was expended bringing you down here. Am I clear?"

Caddy nodded his head vigorously and stuffed a carrot in his mouth. His beloved nodded, satisfied, and turned his back to the portrait, doing interesting things with knives and graters and such as Caddy watched. Sucked on his carrot, to his pony's disgust.

Wished for his sword.

And watched his dark beauty.

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END


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